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Yesterday, former Fox News host Glenn Beck held his much-hyped and highly controversial “Restoring Courage” rally at the foot of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Today, he whined about the skimpy coverage of the event by the media. (Hint: If a pillar of fire had appeared or if the Zechariah prophecy had been fulfilled as Beck had predicted might happen, there might have been more coverage.) Since no prophecies appear to have been fulfilled, Beck began inflating the numbers of attendees at his rally. According to a blog post from yesterday by Yahoo’s Joe Pompeo, Beck’s spokesman said that 4,700 people attended the rally. (1,700 attendees at the spot where Beck was speaking and an additional 3,000 at a remote location where Beck’s event was broadcast live.) But by the time Beck went on the air today, Beck was suggesting that “five to seven” thousand people showed up at the remote location. He was immediately corrected by one of his aides who said there were “5,000 seats set up, and at last count, we had about 8,000 people that showed up, standing room only.” Beck then said there were “10,000 people just in these two locations alone.” And lo and behold, in the space of one day, event attendees grew from 4,700 by Beck’s own spokesman ‘s reported count, to five to seven thousand, to 10,000. Listen: Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time Beck has grossly exaggerated attendance figures for his rallies. In the wake of his 8-28 “Restoring Honor” rally, Beck said he heard that the crowd had been “between 300,000 and 500,000.” But according to an outside firm hired by CBS News, the only independent and semi-official estimate of the crowd was 87,000. Beck has also made the absurd claim that the 9-12 protests that he created and hyped were the “largest march on Washington [D.C.] ever,” and said that a “really conservative” crowd estimate for that march was “500,000.” Later, his estimated number for the 9-12 crowd grew to 750,000 or a million . In fact, one unofficial D.C. fire department estimate placed the number between 60,000 and 75,000 participants. Maybe miracles do happen at Beck’s events: The crowd size doubles (or sometimes grows by a factor of ten) without any explanation.

Tags: august-25, author, breaking news, glenn-beck, israel, media, media matters, michigan, networks, obama, police, wildly-inflates

The right-wing media have spent much of this month sniping at President Obama for taking a vacation. Now, some are taking the criticism up a notch, venturing into racially charged territory in the process. In an August 22 column , WorldNetDaily founder and editor Joseph Farah wrote that “You won’t hear me complain that Obama is taking his 17th vacation in the last two-and-half years,” adding: “We should be grateful the man has no work ethic. Just imagine the damage he would have done to the country if he did.” Farah also asserted that Obama “vacations more than any of his predecessors,” which is simply false . Then, in his August 23 column , WND’s Burt Prelutsky took a break from hurling epithets like “loathsome” and “Chicago cockroach” at Obama to declare: “I wouldn’t care if Obama was a Muslim if he weren’t such an arrogant, lazy, snotty, lying socialist.” That’s twice this week that WND columnists have portrayed Obama as lazy. The idea of the lazy black man is among the hoariest bits of stereotypical racial imagery out there, as we noted when Fox News’ Eric Bolling described Obama as “chugging 40s” and having “hoodlums in the hizzouse.” It’s not the first time that the birther-obsessed WND branch of anti-Obama activism has ventured into this territory. Last year, the WND-affiliated Western Journalism Center published an article with the headline “Is Obama Stupid and Lazy?”

Tags: august-25, breaking news, clinton, conservative, glenn-beck, jobs, media, networks, report, texas

Just one year ago, Glenn Beck held his Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the same memorial. While Beck said the timing was coincidental, he also  stated  that the timing of his event was “divine providence” and  that his event  would  ”reclaim the civil rights movement” from progressives who had distorted it. But apparently, Beck has gotten bored with the mantle of civil rights leader because today, Beck said that he has declared ”an end to the civil rights movement in the West.” Listen:

Tags: august-25, author, creator, feeds, israel, jobs, media matters, networks, war, warren-buffett